ACCEPTANCE -DEAN PORTMAN

[CHAPTER TEN]

(A/N just a warning this chapter contains mentions of underage drinking, only very very slight sexual insinuation and overall self destructing behavior)

It appears the entire school has turned out to see the once Mighty Ducks, I mean rather, the Eden Hall Warriors, do battle with the Blake freshman Bears.

The team had arrived in the rink with their game faces on and ready to hunt some bears.

Eurydice's mom and Elton both said that they would listen in by radio and cheer for her from Miami which she very much appreciated. It was her first game without either of them in the crowd cheering her on, it was odd to not see some embarrassing neon sign in the crowd.

And hopefully Dean kept to his promise of tuning into the game.

As the former Ducks entered their box, the crowd started to cheer, the loudest being Banks and Charlie's mom Casey.

"Gather around. Let's go, hustle up. Come on, all right, think defense."Orion boomed, gaining the attention of the team.

He put his hand out, "Alright hands in."

They excitedly gathered together and squeezed in, some even just reaching as far as they could from the back, "Quack, quack, quack, qu-"

Orion abruptly interrupted them, "Hey, hey, what the hell is that? Knock it off. Alright, Go team, on three. One, two, three."

The team let out a lackluster "Go team." only mumbling, compared to the boisterous cheers only a minute ago.

"We're Ducks not warriors." Fulton grumbled.

Eurydice shrugged, "It doesn't matter what we are to them, the board just wants us to win."

As the first batch got out onto the ice, they came face to face with their first opponents of their high school hockey careers.

The Bears seemed to be pretty nervous as well, while Charlie was throwing a glare at the opposing team's captain, all the captain did was give a him a nervous smile back.

And as soon as the game started, it looked like it was going to go their way, because not only did Charlie win the face off, he won the first goal of the game in a few seconds.

"Way to go Conway!" Eurydice praised, patting him on the back with the rest of the team following suite but Orion was less than impressed with the team's quick upper hand.

"All right, knock off the celebration! Act like you've scored before."

Midway through the game and Julie was starting to get antsy, she had been standing at her post with absolutely nothing to do, the team just kept scoring and the Bears were nowhere near enough to even try and score a single goal.

Russ just had to show off the knuckle puck in front of a crowd of adoring fans and practically gave the Bears' goalie whiplash.

They now had a four to nothing lead, Eurydice hoped Dean was listening in and cheering like he promised, he'd be really proud of them all the way in Chicago

~

Dean's mind was blurry, somebody was under him, he knew how he got there just wasn't sure why.

School was a dumpster fire that he fanned the flames of, his mom and step dad were going through a rough patch and he had practically no friends in Chicago with everybody being scared of him to some extent.

The only people who weren't afraid was seniors and college kids and he passed off well enough as an eighteen year old to get into one of those parties with actual alcohol, not root bear.